


a grave misunderstanding

by demogorgns



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Corpse Bride (2005) Fusion, Bisexual Thomas Thorne, F/M, not a thing but i'm making it a thing, this was a joke that got out of hand
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-13 06:33:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18935374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demogorgns/pseuds/demogorgns
Summary: "...He made a vow lying under that treeThat he'd wait for his true love to come set him freeAlways waiting for someone to ask for his handWhen out of the blue comes this groovy young girlWho vows forever to be by his side..."Alison runs away from her disastrous wedding rehearsal, only to run into even bigger trouble when she puts her wedding ring on what she thinks is a tree branch...





	a grave misunderstanding

**Author's Note:**

> every time i post something i write 'this is the stupidest thing i've ever written' but this is. The Stupidest thing i have Ever written

As she dashed down the stairs like a hysterical, sobbing Cinderella, Alison felt her ankle turn, and caught herself just before she went head-over-heels down the marble steps and smashed like a china doll on the sparklingly clean floor below. _Yikes. That could have been nasty._

She righted herself, and kept going, high heels clicking frantically as she crossed the foyer and flung the doors of Button House open. Alison sighed, and paused a second to flick the annoying, painful shoes off, not considering the courtyard of sharp stones and gardens filled with thorns and rocks that lay beyond the house.

Day had turned to night as her disastrous wedding rehearsal had dragged on, and the grounds of the house, which in daylight had been beautiful and romantically overgrown, now seemed gloomy and vaguely threatening. The crumbling fountain hissed black water as Alison raced past it, to the overgrown hedges with ragged, snarling topiary animals, and through the arch that led to the gardens, the lake, and the rest of the grounds.

She ran through the snagging, grasping branches that ripped and tore at her too-tight, too-fancy rehearsal dress on bare feet, heedless of the stabbing pain and cold as she splashed through puddles. Alison knew she must have looked a _sight,_ but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Her head was still ringing with the massive argument between her parents and Mike’s, the insults flung, and Mike’s mortified face.

It had seemed for a second like their parents’ hatred for each other would end up ruining the entire wedding, and in a fit of panic, frustration, and heartbreak, Alison had burst into tears and fled the scene. _I can’t believe I messed up the vows that badly._ It didn’t really matter – it was only the rehearsal, after all – but Alison’s stuttering and tripping over the words had only cemented the idea in Mike’s family that Alison was _not_ worthy to marry their son, and they had said as much. Loudly. Which led to flung insults and barbs on both sides.

 _This is such bullshit!_ Alison thought, ripping branches aside savagely, cuts and scratches appearing on her bare white arms. _Mike and I love each other, why can’t that be enough?_ Her anger faded as she broke through the undergrowth into a clearing, and she realised she had no idea how far she’d run, or where on the grounds she was. _Shit._

The clearing was at first lost in shadow, but as Alison gazed on it, the moon slid from behind a cloud and lit it up with a pale, ghostly glow. It was beautiful, in an eerie way. Tendrils of fog crept down the slight hill and wound between Alison’s ankles like the soft hands of a lover. She blinked at the moss-covered stones that were leaning, standing, or lying shattered over the clearing. _What are – oh, my God._

Her heart leapt childishly in her chest as she remembered what the old lady owner of the house had told them about the house and the grounds when Alison and Mike had been scouting wedding locations. _This is the old graveyard._ Old childhood fears raised their heads, but were quickly trumped by Alison’s own curiosity. _I wonder how many people are buried here._ The trees here were mostly stumps, or white and dead, poking bone-white fingers up to the sky. Here and there Alison could see the remains of rusting iron railings from the days when the graveyard was well cared for, choked by poison ivy and pointing up at odd angles like the spears of long-dead warriors. The biggest tree there was a dead oak, lying like some beached whale near the perimeter of the clearing, its white roots tangled and stabbing the air like accusatory fingers.

Alison’s heartbeat began to slow, and her breathing became more steady. _It’s just an old graveyard. Nothing to be scared of._

_God, my feet are cold._

She glanced edgily at one of the only intact tombstones, considered sitting down on it, and quickly decided it was too creepy. Instead, she perched on the fallen oak. When she opened her palm, she realised she had been clutching Mike’s wedding ring in her hand the whole time. _Shit. Probably shouldn’t drop the ring in the muddy, foggy grounds. Wouldn’t go down a treat with the future in-laws._ Alison laid the ring carefully on the tree-trunk beside her.

Alison carefully rubbed her cut and freezing toes a little to get the feeling back into them. _Really shouldn’t have kicked off those stupid shoes._ The rest of her was feeling pretty chilly, too – her stupid off-the-shoulder ballgown was _way_ too thin and pretty to be wandering around an abandoned graveyard in the middle of the night. She sighed, and rubbed her hands up and down her goose-bumped arms. Now that she had calmed down, she was feeling pretty silly. _I can’t go back though, not yet._ The idea of slinking back into the house, red-faced, covered in mud and twigs and scratches to face Mike’s parents again was mortifying.

Instead, she picked up the ring, toying with it idly. _How could I have got the vows so wrong?_ She stood up and brushed out her skirt with one hand.

“Come on,” she said aloud, to the empty graveyard. “It’s just a couple of lines. How hard can it be?”

She strode around, mists swirling around her legs, trying to remember.

“With this hand, I will…take your wine. Nope. With this candle, I will…I will…set your mother on fire!” she growled, remembering Mike’s mother’s acid-tongued comments. A moment later, she calmed down. “No, definitely not.”

Alison rolled her eyes. “With this hand, I will…lift your sorrows. Hey! That was right.” She took a deep breath, feeling more confident. “Your…your cup will never empty, for I will be your wine. With this candle –” She grabbed a twig from a nearby bush and held it aloft – “I will light your way in darkness. With this ring…I ask you to be mine.”

Half-jokingly, she placed the ring on an outstretched root of the oak, so twisted and pale and gnarled that it almost looked like a skeletal hand, eternally reaching for the stars.

Alison sighed.

“Okay. Now what?”

The wind rose, whipping her hair around her face. “Great,” she muttered. “Now it’s an even bigger mess.” In the surrounding trees, the crows took flight as one, cawing and screaming into the night sky. Alison shivered again. _This is getting too creepy. I’m gonna go back and apologise. Maybe we can salvage this wedding after all…_

She bent down to retrieve the ring from the root. As her fingers brushed the wood, however, it seemed to…come to life. And grab onto her wrist with surprising strength.

Alison blinked. For a split second, her mind considered the possibilities – trick of the light, hallucination. But the bruising grip on her wrist immediately disabused her of any such comforting notions. _This is happening._

She watched, aghast, as the ground split and another hand broke free of the earth and dragged… _something_ onto the surface. She cried out as the hand gripping hers dragged her down a little, pulling whatever was in the ground further up. Alison stumbled back, with a disgusting tearing sound as the limb attached to hers pulled free. She made a disgusted noise and shook it off, and she fell to the ground, frozen in terror, as the wasted figure of a man stood up before her.

“I do.”

Finally, Alison’s brain made the connection with her mouth, and she screamed.

She scrambled backwards over the ground as the man – because it _was_ a man, however skeletal and wasted he might be – leaned towards her. She turned and half-crawled away, frantic, before finally finding her feet. The crows seemed to be flocking around her, cawing and scratching and getting tangled in her hair, and Alison had to battle through them to get away. She couldn’t move fast enough, though – like in a nightmare, it felt like she was wading through treacle.

“My love, wait for me –”

Alison felt a cold, dead hand on her arm and froze again in fear.

It – _he_ – was even worse up close. Once, he might have been mildly good-looking, but death and decay had taken much of that. Alison could see the exposed bones in his jaw and ribs, one hand worn away to a skeleton, and a gaping hole in his side, his waistcoat stained with centuries-old blood. He was dressed in the Regency style, in clothes that might have been beautiful were they not rotting on his body.

Another scream rose in Alison, but she choked it back down. The crows were flocking around them again, a tornado of black feathers slowly blotting out the surrounding graveyard. Alison felt like she was spinning too – her head reeled and she felt unsurprisingly lightheaded. _Oh, I’m not gonna faint, am I?_ she thought, her mind clinging to the banal. _Fainting’s such a girl thing to do._

She could feel the hands – one cold and clammy, one bony and sharp – on her shoulders. She was beginning to feel woozy, and as the crows closed in around them, Alison’s world went black as well.

“Oh! I do so love it when we have a new arrival!”

“Hush, Kitty –”

“Is she alright?”

“Just, hold on a moment, guys. Give her some air.”

“What’s going on? I want to see, hold me up, hold me _up!”_

Alison groaned. Her head was throbbing. The lights were too bright, she could feel it even through her closed eyelids. She opened them a crack, listening to the hushed whispers getting more excitable by the minute.

“Oh! Oh! I think her eyes are opening! I think she’s waking up!”

“Stand aside, damn you! She’s _my_ bride!”

Alison’s vision was still blurry. Her arms felt like lead when she raised them to rub her eyes.

“Oh! She moved!”

“Yes, we can all see that, Katherine, thank you.”

“My love? Are you well?”

 _That voice…oh, God. Oh no._ Alison opened her eyes fully. _I’m dreaming. I must be._

The phantom that had menaced her in the graveyard was leaning over her as she lay on what appeared to be a chaise-longue. Behind him, a crowd of even more terrifying figures loomed. There was a pretty Georgian lady in a purple dress with a hideously blue, oxygen-starved face; a grey Edwardian woman in a mouldering lace dress, her neck canted at a sickening angle; a World War Two soldier, pale and wasted from some disease; a headless Tudor corpse covered in blood; a horrifically burned woman in Stuart costume, a…caveman? _Surely not._ Alison blinked again, trying to clear the fog from her mind. _Yep. That’s a dead caveman, alright. And standing next to him is a Cub Scouts Master._ The arrow through the poor man’s neck had Alison’s stomach in knots. _And that one’s got no trousers on._ And livid, brutal-looking bruises around his neck. All of them were in varying stages of decay.

She might have laughed, if she wasn’t concentrating so hard on not fainting again.

“W-w-what…w-w-where…”

“She’s trying to speak!” said the Georgian lady brightly.

“We can hear her, Kitty!” sighed the Edwardian woman with a roll of her eyes.

Alison found her voice at last. “Where am I? What _are_ you people?”

“Where do you think you are, you ill-bred hen? This is _Button House,”_ the Edwardian woman said primly.

 _Nope. No, it’s not._ The last time Alison had checked, the house had not been so vibrantly decorated and brightly lit. Or so full of corpses.

“My darling, don’t be afraid,” said the first one, the one who had found her in the graveyard. In the bright light, it was even harder not to stare at the gory bullet hole in his side. “You’re perfectly safe with me.”

“But you’re – I mean, you’re all –”

“Dead?” said the Scout Master brightly. “Well, yes.”

“Happens to the best of us,” said the one with no trousers.

Unable to stand any more, Alison jumped up and backed herself into a corner. “I – I want questions –”

“Answers,” said the Scout Master helpfully. “I think you mean answers.”

“Answers, thank you, yes,” Alison said breathlessly. _I just thanked a dead person. No, no, no you didn’t Alison, because dead people can’t talk –_ “Why am I here? What’s going on?”

“Ah,” said the one with the bullet wound, looking rather shy. “Well, that’s a bit of a long story, you see.”

“You brought her here and you didn’t even tell her why?” the army one said with a frown. “Bad form, Thorne, really bad form.”

“Well, there wasn’t much time!” the other replied, petulantly. “She fainted before I could get a word in edgeways!”

“Oh, so it’s _my_ fault?” Alison said, scandalised, fully aware in the back of her mind that the whole situation was absurd.

“No, no, my dove, I didn’t mean –”

“ _Maybe,”_ interrupted the Scout Master, “Someone should _explain_ the situation.”

“Well, _I_ can’t,” said the Regency one melodramatically, his skeletal hand pressed to his wound. “You _know_ how it upsets me.”

“Fine, I will. I’ve always liked storytelling, anyway,” said the Scout Master warmly, turning back to Alison. “You see – I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

“Alison.”

“Oh, nice to meet you, Alison. I’m Pat.”

“…Hello, Pat.”

“Oh, hello!” Pat seemed to forget what he was speaking about for a moment. “Now, where was I? Oh, right. You see, Alison, when Thomas here was alive, he was in love with – well, a very famous poet –”

“Whose name shall _not_ be spoken in my presence,” hissed Thomas, pressing his hand to his wound a little tighter. The army captain rolled his eyes behind his back.

“Ah, yeah, of course not Tom – anyway, since this was the 1820s, things weren’t as nice back then for, uh, how do I put this –”

“Gay people?” Alison supplied.

“Oh, my dear, I would never subscribe to such limiting labels,” Thomas butted in with a smile. Pat adjusted his glasses.

“Well, whatever, the long and short of it is, this poet – whose name we will not mention – persuaded Thomas to run away with him, with most of his family fortune. They were going to meet under the old oak tree – you know, the one at the bottom of the abandoned graveyard? Spooky place, innit? Anyway, when Thomas got there…”

“He shot me,” Thomas said in declarative tones, seemingly forgetting he was too upset to speak of it. “And left me there under that tree, alone. All alone!” Sobbing, he flung himself down on the chaise longue Alison had briefly occupied. She bit down on a burst of laughter.

“Yes,” said the army captain, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Bad bit of business.”

“Anyway, Thomas has waited there since then,” Pat continued, “Waiting for his true love to come by, and, uh, put a ring on it.”

“You have no way with words, Patrick,” said Thomas bitingly from under his palm, which he had laid over his eyes dramatically.

“Wait – you mean – you think _I –_ ”

“Am the one?” Thomas asked, sitting up again with a brighter expression. “Why, yes, my love!”

“But I didn’t – I never –”

“You said your vows so beautifully, my sweet,” Thomas beamed, holding up his hand. The bright band of gold – Mike’s wedding ring - glinted there. “How could I fail to have been wooed?”

“No, no way,” Alison laughed nervously. “There was no wooing. Absolutely not. Never _ever.”_

Thomas’ face dropped.

“Oh, dear,” said Pat nervously. “This is a bit of sticky wicket, eh?” He giggled a little. Alison, and the corpses, all looked at him as one. “Sorry,” he said, abashed. “I laugh when I’m nervous.”


End file.
